Jolly Phonics Jolly Phonics Whiteboard - UK Precursive

This one is a bit tricky.


It comes as 2 MSIs, but neither seemed to want to play nice in terms of a silent install. Not for me, anyway. Perhaps some MSI guru will know better?!?


I ended up doing the following:


1. Copy CD1's "assets" folder to a folder

2. Copy CD2's assets\Jolly2.cab to the same folder as Jolly1.cab

3. Msiexec /a [path]\Install.msi


You'll now have an Administrative install created.


I then created a transform using ORCA to get rid of the desktop and uninstall icons.


Now run with:

msiexec /i install.msi /qn /norestart

PIDKEY="your-licence-key-here"


The MSI also had the following variables which I set to 0 for my rollout. Probably not needed since I killed the desktop icons with the MST, but anyway..


AI_DESKTOP_SH=1 or 0 for desktop shortcuts or not

AI_QUICKLAUNCH_SH = 1 or 0 for quicklaunch shortcuts

AI_STARTUP_SH=1 or 0



Run that, and the program will install. However, that's not quite everything.


This program creates the licence key under %APPDATA%\Jolly Learning for the user which INSTALLS it. Meaning that anyone else running it gets a licence error. Handy.


I ended up writing a small AU3 which copies the lic file over to the user's appdata folder and then runs the exe passed to it as a parameter. Horribly kludgy, but there y'go.


I then replaced the shortcuts with ones which point to my compiled launcher app with the correct exe as a parameter.


If you need to get hold of the exes to create your own .ico files, they're stored in %systemroot%\installer\{blah} - right click the originals, select change icon and note the path.


Word of warning - the original exes are 16 bit ones, so I had to use ICOFX to extract them first.



All in all, a bit of a palaver... Still, gets there in the end :)



If anyone wants a copy of the installer or launcher script source, send me a message :)